LOS ANGELES, Aug. 19 (UPI) — Jason Statham has carved a reliable niche in the action genre with some exceptional entries. Mutiny, in theaters Friday, does not make extra effort but it is still a serviceable way to see Statham kill bad guys who totally deserve it.

Cole Reed (Statham) is the bodyguard to shipping magnate Tibu Campallo (Ramon Tikaram). Reed kills a gang of would-be assassins, but Tibu still dies of heart failure so it’s totally not Cole’s fault.

The assassins were crew on the KMG Artemis shipping freighter, so Cole sneaks onto the boat to find out who’s behind the attempt on Tibu. Meanwhile, Angie Ellis (Annabelle Wallis) gets a last-minute call to be third mate on the Artemis, so has to miss her weekend with her daughter so she doesn’t lose her job entirely.

Mutiny does not feature an ensemble of colorful characters like The Beekeeper or outrageous humor like the Crank movies. What it has are generic bad guys doing a bad thing so Cole can stop them.

Cole discovers injured refugees in one of the crates, whom Ellis discovers herself soon after. It’s little surprise that Captain Markus Madsen (Rolland Møller) covers up the human trafficking when Ellis reports it to him.

The Artemis isn’t a cruise ship full of passengers or even a Battleship filled with servicemen, so it is a rather empty vessel, as it were, for Cole to face the villains. Madsen keeps sending men after Cole one or two at a time in classic bad guy fashion.

If Madsen sent a larger group after Cole, the movie wouldn’t make it to 90 minutes. We’ve already seen Cole take out at least five assassins at once, so truthfully ganging up on him wouldn’t improve Madsen’s odds.

Fight scenes make satisfying use of an open padlock, fire axe, hook and speargun. There could be more nautical implements incorporated, but Cole does climb the anchor chain like a ladder too.

Ellis gets out of her own scrapes too. Considerably fewer than Cole, but she can handle herself.

She also manages to send a distress call which a naval ship receives. They make their way to the Artemis’s location and provide dossiers for both Cole and Madsen en route.

The trafficking victims are less deeply realized characters than the ones in The Furious. They’re essentially placeholders that need saving, but it works as shorthand for this sort of reliable formula.

They are on a real ship and possibly even at sea. Interiors may be on a set but even those are physical surroundings making it feel more real than this summer’s other ocean movie.

Even doling out the bad guys and with the Navy ship making its slow approach, Mutiny feels padded. It wallows in between fight scenes which is where a little more flair could make the formula a bit more fun.

There is a funny implication that Cole can sneak into the boat using one of the assassin’s passports because it’s another bald, unshaven guy. Mutiny also delivers both Statham modes, in a fancy suit as the bodyguard and then casual in denim sneaking around the ship.

Since Richet also directed Plane he missed a real opportunity to call this movie Boat. Mutiny will suffice.

Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.